


Full Stop.

by keyboardclicks



Category: This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us - Edgar Cantero
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hermaphroditism, Intersex, Not much plot, Periods, and complications resulting from it, gotta be accurate when writing doctors, y'all won't believe the research I did for the smallest bits of this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-15 20:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17536112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keyboardclicks/pseuds/keyboardclicks
Summary: Because A.Z. Kimrean's life wasn't complicated enough, they obviously needed start getting Zooey's period at nineteen fucking years old.Yeah.Great.Perfect.





	Full Stop.

Puberty. A messy, awkward time in a person’s life where their mind doesn’t know what it wants and their body has absolutely no fucking clue what it’s doing. Teenagers can hardly be blamed for all the stupid stuff they do, what with the truckloads of hormones coursing through them at every given moment and their frontal lobes losing the race of what part of the brain will be first to develop. Luckily, there are many books and resources regarding what will happen to a given body during this time. Failing that, there are also parents ready to give necessary advice to their offspring and assure them that everything will be okay and they just have to wait out these few awkward cocoon years so that they can later emerge as beautiful butterflies. (Or some other suitably masculine analogy for parents who fear that comparing their male child to a butterfly will somehow have an impact on their sexuality.)

Unfortunately, there were no books for the Kimreans. Doctors could and did do their best to guess at how their body would change and handle the simultaneous male and female puberties, but honestly it was anyone’s guess. For the first few years, things seemed as textbook as they could be with a case of true hermaphroditism. Puberty started at age 13, a little late but nothing to be concerned about. Things seemed fine for the most part, and the tits they had grown were really the only evidence that a female-adjacent part of puberty had even taken place.

And then, at the ripe old age of 19, something changed.

It had been just under a year since Zooey had become Zooey and not just The Annoying And Misbehaving Part of Adrian. Dr. Quain—Gwen, she’d said to call her Gwen—was still fighting to get her legally recognized, and until that happened it didn’t look likely that the Kimreans would be leaving the hospital any time soon. Which was fine, honestly. They had pretty good digs at that point; their own room in the north wing, stacks of books and comics and a handheld video game system that Gwen had snuck in for them, and they were even allowed to wear their own clothes. It wasn’t great, but Adrian knew that since they were no longer minors they wouldn’t have the help of the foster system anymore, and so even if they were released they’d have nowhere to go.

It was quiet time in the ward, which used to be absolute hell because Zooey and Quiet were not compatible words. But the DS was doing a pretty good job of distracting her, and Adrian was happy to lay back and just spend the time thinking. He had lately been studying a biology textbook that Gwen had leant him, and was wondering how long it would take for him to earn his (their? would Zooey have to earn her own?) GED once they got out. They hadn’t been feeling well for the past couple of days; nothing serious, just more lethargic and irritable than usual, and a little sore in their mid region. Neither of them had even bothered mentioning it, figured it was probably a bad reaction to something that had been served for dinner on a recent night. But that day, they still felt pretty off.

“Ugh, I can’t focus,” Zooey sighed, closing the system.

“What a shock,” muttered Adrian.

“I’m serious! My stomach hurts…”

“It’s not our stomach; the stomach’s up here.” Adrian pressed down on the middle left side of their torso, near where the ribcage ended. “The pain’s closer to our intestines.”

“Well my intestines hurt!”

It _did_ hurt. It was a distracting kind of pain, vaguely throbbing and bringing a nauseous feeling to the back of Kimrean’s throat, like when you fall directly on your tailbone or get kicked between the legs. Every so often, for the past couple of hours, Adrian had been pulled from his thoughts by a surge of pain that dissipated seconds later. He'd probably mention it when Gwen came by later.

Adrian was busy calculating how much longer it was before lunch, when he felt his right hand push past the elastic band of their sweatpants.

“No,” he said firmly, pulling it back out. “You’re _not_ getting off right now.”

“But it might heeeeeeelp,” Zooey wined.

“It’s _not_ going to help.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t even know what’s wrong!”

“I know that mastrubation isn’t a recommended cure for any sort of intestinal problems.”

“Well then fine, I’m just bored and it sounds like the most fun thing to do!” And she stuck their hand right back down and into their underwear, where it stayed for a couple of seconds. Then Zooey frowned, said, “Huh. That doesn’t feel right”, and pulled it back out.

It was not often that both halves of A.Z. Kimrean had the same reaction to things. But the yelling when they saw blood come back on their right hand? Was both of them.

“Your medical records don’t show you ever exhibiting signs of menstruation,” Gwen sighed, sitting next to Kimrean’s bed, which had been given fresh sheets after a sizeable blood stain was discovered on it. Their clothes, predictably enough, had also been ruined, and they had changed. “But Zooey has a perfectly in tack uterus, so I suppose we shouldn’t be completely surprised, even if it only occurs in 50% of people with true hermaphroditism…”

“Gwe-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-n,” moaned Zooey. They were laying on their left side, curled up in the fetal position and clutching their lower abdomen. In the forty five minutes since the blood was discovered, cleaned up, Kimrean’s body examined for any sign of what was causing the bleeding, and Gwen coming to the obvious conclusion—(“Seriously, why was that not our first thought?”)—that it was not an internal hemorrhage but simply menstrual bleeding, the cramps had become almost unbearable. “Fix this, give me drugs, _something I’m dying._ ”

“You aren’t dying,” the doctor chuckled. “Menstrual cramps are awful, but not deadly.”

_“You don’t know my body_.”

“I do, actually, better than most people. How are you holding up, Adrian?”

An amber eye peaked out from straw-colored bangs, glowering. “For once, Zooey and I are in agreement. Drugs. Now, please.”

She sighed. “Alright, alright.” 

She left the room, her footsteps disappearing down the hall, but not towards the elevator that would take her to the pharmacy on the first floor. Instead, she turned right into an office, came back out, and returned to the room after not being gone for more than a minute.

“I always keep some motrin in my purse,” she explained, shaking two tables into her hand. She held them out to A.Z., gesturing to the water on their bedside table. “They’ll help with the cramping.”

“Screw the motrin!” Zooey lamented. “Gimme the hard stuff! Vicodin, morphine, something! I can’t take this much longer!”

In a very dramatic show, Zooey tossed herself onto their back and threw an arm over their face. Then they curled back up on their side and whimpered, because period cramps are a bitch.

“You’ll take what I give you and you’ll like it.”

Ready and able to take anything that would help, Adrian swallowed both pills in one large gulp of water. He felt Zooey’s urge to grab the entire bottle from Gwen’s hand, but before he had to stop her she’d put it in the pocket of her coat.

“Why is this happening _now_ all of a sudden?” he asked. “We’re way past early puberty at this point.”

Gwen hmmmed and flipped through a page of their files. “Well..., I can’t say for sure, but the obvious answer is, as with most things, your duality. An increase in the level of testosterone in the body is known to alter menstrual cycles, or even stop them entirely. So your puberties started at the same time and Adrian's cancelled out Zooey's ability to display a full cycle, despite there being a uterus. It could be that things are beginning to even out, so to speak, or that there just happened to be a lower amount of testosterone and a higher amount of estrogen at the same time and that resulted in menstruation.” 

“ _I blame you!”_ hissed Zooey, squinting to let Adrian know she was attempting to glare at him.

“Shut up, you stupid bitch; it’s me that’s been keeping them at bay for years!”

“Now, now, children.”

Adrian sighed. “So is this gonna be something we deal with every month from now on?”

Gwen shrugged. “Honestly? That is a great question. In a hermaphroditic body every case is unique. This could be a one time thing, a monthly thing, or a semi-monthly thing. We really don’t have a way of knowing.”

Some mental math suddenly added up in Adrian’s half of their mind, and he quickly pushed himself up on Zooey’s arm to look Gwen in the eye. “Wait,” he said. “Does this mean we can get pregnant?”

“What? Oh, no! No. No no no no no.” The relief on Adrian’s face pulled a chuckle from her. “That’s not something you need to worry about. The two of you don’t have ovaries, but instead a set of ovotestis that are… well, they’re something in between ovaries and testes. And since they’re unlikely to produce enough estradiol for pregnancy to occur, the chances of that happening are slim to none.”

“It’s the ‘slim’ part of that sentence that I’m worried about.” He fwumped back down into a lying position. “As I’m sure you’re aware, Zooey’s pretty much willing to fuck everything that moves.”

“Rude!” Zooey contested. “I have _standards!_ ”

“I’ll make sure to get an estradiol level test done sometime soon,” Gwen promised. “Then you’ll know for sure, okay? For now there’s not much else to do for the cramps besides the midol. I’d say a heating pad but because of the cords that isn’t allowed in the facility...”

“If I’d wanted to hang myself I would have found way to do it already, I promise.”

“Can we get extra chocolate with lunch? And dinner? And in general?” Zooey asked. “Chocolate helps, right?”

“How can you think about food right now?” Adrian grimaced. “I feel like our stomach’s doing somersaults.” 

“Nausea is also very common, unfortunately,” Gwen said sympathetically as she rose from her seat. “I have to go check on some other rooms before lunch. You two just sit tight until then, okay?”

“Slide that trash can over here before you go,” said Adrian as Gwen approached the doorway. “Because we’re gonna puke.”

As a doctor who worked with patients who, by definition, exhibited unpredictable behavior, Gwen considered her reflexes to be above average. This was fortunate because as soon as the words left Kimrean’s mouth, they started to gag. She managed to the small wastebasket to their bedside just as the heaving stop and the puking began. It was also fortunate that, as a doctor, she had seen things much more disgusting than an androgynous teenager losing the contents of their stomach. In a soothing, motherly gesture she lay one cool hand on the back of Kimrean’s neck and another on their shoulder, rubbing slightly. Zooey arched into the attention like a cat. Adrian tried not to miss the basket.

“Well, on the bright side,” Zooey said after they’d stopped heaving, “I think those eggs actually tasted better the second time around.”

**Author's Note:**

> Idk how to like things casually so I wrote this and did a Kimrean cosplay in the same day.
> 
> http://aceoofhearts.tumblr.com/post/182281118052/i-dont-know-what-im-doing-half-the-time-i


End file.
